IPL news: BCCI expects media rights value to reflect growth of league
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Jay Shah has predicted that the media rights value of the Indian Premier League (IPL) are set for a significant bump.
Shah wouldn’t get into dollar amounts but there is a suggestion that the 2023-27 cycle will break all sorts of sports broadcasting records.
The BCCI are reportedly set to float tenders for the new cycle in the coming week and plan to conduct an e-auction for the rights before the completion of the 2022 IPL.
Industry experts have suggested that the next IPL TV deal could be worth as much as $6.7billion.
“The aspirational value of Brand IPL has surpassed anyone and everyone’s expectations,” Shah said, as quoted by Reuters.
“The valuation will mirror the rise and growth of the league.”
There have been reports that the BCCI would consider taking seperate bids for TV and digital rights, with Amazon expressing interest in the IPL.
The BCCI believes that the addition of two new teams and therefore added matches and regional interest, wil greatly inflate the value of what is already the richest franchise tournament in the world.
“Two new teams mean more opportunities to the entire cricketing ecosystem. You can gauge the level of interest with the valuation for two new teams,” Shah said.
“In just 14 seasons, we have recorded unprecedented figures that other popular leagues reached after decades,” Shah said. “Not just television but look at the numbers on digital.”
The BCCI netted INR 16,347.5 crore (US$ 2.55 billion) for its previous IPL television and digital rights from a single bidder, Star India, who made a consolidated offer for rights worldwide.
Star’s winning bid was a 158% increase in the media rights value for IPL broadcasting from the previous cycle which ran from 2009.
Sony had bought television rights for US$ 1.63 billion for nine years from World Sports Group in 2009, which had bagged the rights for US$ 918 million from the BCCI for a ten-year period, which now seems a bit of a steal.
It is clear that nothing short of exponential growth in rights values will please the BCCI.